You say protocols, I say rule sets

ARTICLE: The Protocol Society, By DAVID BROOKS, New York Times, December 22, 2009

Nice piece by Brooks.

Will sound awfully familiar to readers of this blog. Just substitute "rule sets" for protocols. Algorithms work nicely too!

Been saying it for over a decade (all the way back to TheRuleSets.Project days): America's most important exports are its rules.

We consider it soft power; others view it more harshly (or hard-ly).

(Thanks: Eric Fisher)

China: moving on up the production chain

CORPORATE NEWS: "China Steps Up Drive to Shrink Its Role as a Top Global Steelmaker," by Chuin-Wei Ya and Andrew Batson, Wall Street Journal< 4 December 2009.

China is hot to cut production capacity in its overbuilt (overly fractured) steel industry, so it's got big plans to close all sort of facilities over the next three years.

Stunning, to think of it. Used to be that making steel was the great sign of making it as an industrial power (was even for America in my childhood), but now "making it" is seen as moving beyond such crude production to higher-earnings and cleaner industries.

And, as for China, it makes no sense, energy wise or resource wise, to continue trying to produce half the world's steel.

We can still trim nukes

ARTICLE: Nearing Arms Pact, U.S. and Russia Look Ahead, By PETER BAKER, New York Times, December 17, 2009

Next step is to go after the tactical nukes, most subject to theft--we are told.

An exaggerated fear, no doubt, but a perfectly fine target to pursue.

As I have indicated earlier, there is plenty of unneeded excess that both sides can safely trim, mostly for cost reasons. And yes, we will reduce to a dyad of ground and sea-based, retiring the most vulnerable leg (air-based).

But eventually, Obama or some successor will hit bone, and then the pushback will be profound (and I will join it vigorously).

But plenty of road still to cover.

World War Z(Iran)

ARTICLE: Iran: Basij member describes election abuse, Channel 4, December 16, 2009

When the czar loses the allegiance of the Cossacks, further instability results. Do we witness, as my brother puts it, the emergence of a "zombie government" in Iran (dead but does not know it). As a historical reference, this one is certainly more current and easily understood than my preferred late-Brezhnevian USSR, but basically the same idea.

(Thanks: NeoTrad Librarian)

Hang tough on North Korea

OP-ED: How to make progress on North Korea, Washington Post, December 18, 2009

I go with Henry here: no utility in necking down from the six-party talks. No good reason to indulge the little man.

That Brazil: always thinkin'

ARTICLE: Looking ahead, Brazil's farmers take up reforestation, By Juan Forero, Washington Post, November 23, 2009

Again, Brazil intrigues by showing a real ability to think ahead on stemming deforestation.

Time and again I find myself struck by the innovative thinking and ambitious foreign policy coming out of that rising power.

Africa will be ground zero for globalization's integration

ARTICLE: The ultimate crop rotation, By Stephanie McCrummen, Washington Post, November 23, 2009

As I've noted in old columns, along with The Economist, the third great wave of outsourcing (after manufacturing and services) continues unabated:

This impoverished and chronically food-insecure Horn of Africa nation is rapidly becoming one of the world's leading destinations for the booming business of land leasing, by which relatively rich countries and investment firms are securing 40-to-99-year contracts to farm vast tracts of land.

Done well, this can be an amazingly good thing, breaking a lot of bad cycles and triggering needed migration from underemployed and undermechanized ag areas to cities that, hopefully, provide low-end manufacturing jobs of the sort one likes to see when industrialization kicks in.

Gives you a sense that India, China and Arab wealth funds will be involved on both ends of the process.

But, as an emerging rule set, this can equally go quite badly, and hence, it needs to be a profound focus of inquiry.

More to the potential downside:

The scale and pace of the land scramble have alarmed policymakers and others concerned about the implications for food security in countries such as Ethiopia, where officials recently appealed for food aid for about 6 million people as drought devastates parts of East Africa. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is in the midst of a food security summit in Rome, where some of the 62 heads of state attending are to discuss a code of conduct to govern land deals, which are being struck with little public input.

"These contracts are pretty thin; no safeguards are being introduced," said David Hallam, a deputy director at the FAO. "You see statements from ministers where they're basically promising everything with no controls, no conditions."

The harshest critics of the practice conjure images of poor Africans starving as food is hauled off to rich countries. Some express concern that decades of industrial farming will leave good land spoiled even as local populations surge. And skeptics also say the political contexts cannot be ignored.

"We don't trust this government," said Merera Gudina, a leading opposition figure here who accuses Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of using the land policy to hold on to power. "We are afraid this government is buying diplomatic support by giving away land."

But many experts are cautiously hopeful, saying that big agribusiness could feed millions by industrializing agriculture in countries such as Ethiopia, where about 80 percent of its 75 million people are farmers who plow their fields with oxen.

"If these deals are negotiated well, I tell you, it will change the dynamics of the food economy in this country," said Mafa Chipeta, the FAO's representative in Ethiopia, dismissing the worst-case scenarios. "I can't believe Ethiopia or any other government would allow their country to be used like an empty womb. The human spirit would not allow it."

Since it'll be rising New Core powers that do most of this, just watch how the whole anti-globalization thing becomes less about the West and the U.S. in particular and more about China. Then we'll see what "non-interference" means.

And yet, look at Ethiopia and tell me this isn't better than the status quo of underutilization?

Few countries have embraced the trend as zealously as Ethiopia, where hard-baked eastern deserts fade into spectacularly lush and green western valleys fed by the Blue Nile. Only a quarter of the country's estimated 175 million fertile acres is being farmed.

$4.2B so far committed by Indian companies in Africa.

So yeah, Africa will be ground zero for globalization's integration processes in the coming years--without a doubt.

I am psyched to finally be heading to South Africa next Feb to address this issue at a big mining conference.

U.S. to China: ask for more (but don't expect too much)

ARTICLE: What more can China do to boost ties, By David Shambaugh, China Daily, 2009-11-13

Very impressive bit of logic in China Daily prior to recent Obama visit.

Guts:

While Washington should ask for more from Beijing, it must also be careful not to expect too much. The history of Sino-American relations over the past 30 years is replete with examples of one side or the other having unrealistically high expectations of the other, only to be disappointed by the other's ability to match expectations. Today, the Chinese government continues to have great domestic responsibilities, and its international positions are often at considerable variance with the US. Thus, the partnership has to be pursued within limits and often in parallel rather than directly, although both sides should constantly look for further opportunities to expand global and regional Asian cooperation.

At present, two potential new areas of cooperation are Afghanistan and western Pacific maritime security. The first will require adjustments in thinking in Beijing, while the second will need adjustments in Washington and Tokyo.

China could provide a great deal of useful security, aid, and other humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan - if it decided to and Washington and its NATO partners welcomed it. To date, Washington has not asked and Beijing has been reticent to contribute. But China could allow the People's Armed Police (Wujing) to help train Afghan police (a pressing need), and the People's Liberation Army could perhaps even participate in the multinational military operations against the Taliban and Al-Qaida (also China's enemies).

China could also do much to build hard infrastructure in Afghanistan - roads, bridges, tunnels, buildings - as well as contributing personnel to tertiary education and public health clinics across the country. China has much experience in these areas in Africa and elsewhere - the time is now ripe to get involved in partnership with NATO and others on the ground in Afghanistan.

Maintaining maritime security in the western Pacific region has been primarily an American responsibility since World War II. But as the Chinese navy continually expands its operational range and China's interests in keeping the sea-lanes of communications (SLOCs) open and secure increase, it should naturally play a greater role in Asia-Pacific maritime security.

This will require a fairly major adjustment in the strategic thinking of Japan and the US - seeing China's expanded operations in terms of co-management of the maritime commons - while it will require Beijing to accept an expanded role for the Japanese maritime forces in the region. It will also require intelligence sharing and joint naval and air operations, things that adversaries do not do.

Thus, underlying such maritime cooperation requires the US and Japan to abandon the "strategic hedging" and "balancing" mindset - while China must open up its military operations to external scrutiny and fully engage the American and Japanese militaries as partners.

See? I'm not a complete nut on this subject, just ahead of the wave by design.

(Thanks: historyguy99)

Matrix meets Ferngully

My daughter Em and I decided, after tonight's viewing in a local IMAX, that Avatar is--in high concept terms--The Matrix meets Ferngully.

Liked the 3D, but the plot was too stock and the villains were too cartoonishly drawn, so once you got past the initiation front-half, your mind wanders during the all-too-predictable back half. As much as I loved all the gee-whiz stuff, and it truly is amazing, I found myself thinking up more interesting alternative plots while the second half unfolded.

And frankly, that's not like me whatsoever. I love to get lost in plots. I love to be clueless and suspend disbelief. I don't like to pull back from the screen whatsoever. But time and again I found myself wondering why Cameron didn't go down this alley or that one, all of which seemed more interesting (his realized world is truly fascinating) than the tired plot I knew was coming.

In that failure, Cameron is the anti-Roddenberry: shift humanity hundreds of years and we still encounter only the worst traits on display--and completely in control of the story (unfortunately). The same can be said of his vision of technology: we can create the avatars but have no more anthropological good sense than first-contact explorers from the 15th century; we can travel the universe but still can only--apparently--mine resources in a manner of some Middle Earth kingdom.

Cameron is a great director--unbelievably talented. But he's like Spike Lee. He simply should not write his own plots, because they're so stiff, ideologically speaking, that they diminish the product. What's so amazing is that his skill as a filmmaker often overcomes the material--transcending it.

As a side note, I see a very bright future for Zoe Saldana. She did wonders with the role. And the 3D technology is very engaging. I could see a lot of action movies benefiting tremendously from this new approach.

Obama's nice, de-hyped approach to Iran

OP-ED: The Inertia Option, By ROGER COHEN, New York Times, December 17, 2009

Key bit:

All this says -- nay, screams -- to me: Do nothing. It is President Barack Obama's outreach that has unsettled a regime that found American axis-of-evil rhetoric easy to exploit. After struggling, Obama has also found his sweet spot in combining that détente with quiet support for universal rights. Note the feminine possessive pronoun in this line from his Nobel speech: "Somewhere today, in this world, a young protester awaits the brutality of her government but has the courage to march on." I saw those bloodied women marching in Tehran in June and will never forget them.

Agree, but see no problem in targeting the Guards' biz interests with specific sanctions. Good bargaining chips.

But yes, I do like the de-hyped way Obama has responded to date. I just wish this confident quiet was extended to the nuke issue.

(Via WPR's Media Roundup)

Impressive overview of new maritime strategy

ARTICLE: Inside the New Maritime Strategy, By John Ennis, Proceedings, December 2009 Vol. 135/12/1,282

Interesting story passed on by old student of mine (a rare and tiny fraternity) from Naval War College. Actually, Bob was my best, and once he started wielding his lightsaber, I backed off so as not to join the Force prematurely.

Recalling my description of the process behind "...From the Sea," this is a great retelling of the major debate points and very much worth the read.

Most pertinent bit to me:

Should We "Name" China?

The question of whether to "call out" China in the document was one of the most interesting and engaging of the entire process. Doing so would have been uncontroversial; after all, several senior OSD documents, including the last Quadrennial Defense Review, had done so, and there were many voices on Capitol Hill calling for the Navy in particular to be more mindful of the "Chinese threat." That said, the combined maritime leadership decided not to do so, largely on the basis of two ideas.

The first was the centrality of the global system to the strategy and the critical cooperative relationships with like-minded nations in fostering and sustaining that system. Simply put, China has a huge stake in having the global system function smoothly. Crafting a strategy that invited them to maintain the system, rather than needlessly antagonizing them, seemed appropriate.

Second, there was never any question among the writing team or the flag and general officers who approved the strategy that the Chinese would read themselves into the document in the places where they wanted them to. This was largely confirmed in the work of Dr. Andrew Erickson of the Naval War College's China Maritime Studies Institute, who monitored open-source Chinese reactions to the document. These reactions were largely predictable, with a certain amount of attention paid to the document's description of a "multipolar" world (they liked this) and a sense of foreboding over the object of all this "cooperation."

Impressive logic on both counts--as in, sophisticated and mature.

(Thanks: Bob Nugent)

Drone feeds: A loose rule set until exploited and thus popularly revealed

FRONT PAGE: "Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones: $26 Software Is Used to Breach Key Weapons in Iraq; Iranian Backing Suspected," by Siobhan Gorman, Yochi J. Dreazen and August Cole, Wall Street Journal, 17 December 2009.

FRONT PAGE: "Officers Warned of Flaw In U.S. Drones in 2004," by Yochi J. Dreazen, August Cole and Siobhan Gorman, Wall Street Journal, 18 December 2009.

U.S. NEWS: "Drone Breach Stirs Calls to Fill Cyber Post, By Siobhan Gorman, Yochi J. Dreazen and August Cole , Wall Street Journal, 19-20 December 2009.

ARTICLE: Obama to Name Chief of Cybersecurity, By JOHN MARKOFF, New York Times, December 21, 2009

A wonderfully predictable series of stories. I waited until the shoes stopped dropping before commenting.

As soon as you see the story, you know we went cheap until our cheapness was found out and exploited.

Then you just knew there'd be somebody X years ago warning about this in some memo, because THERE ALWAYS IS SOMEBODY!

Then the political reaction: blame Obama for not having a cyber czar, because this is America, and we love and trust czars!

So Obama acts.

It's almost like haiku in its predictable strokes.

Connection is good (and we can live with the death of little languages)

ARTICLE: Russians Wary of Cyrillic Web Domains, By CLIFFORD J. LEVY, New York Times, December 21, 2009

Go slow on the whole Balkanization theory of web growth:

Cut off for decades under Communism, Russians revel in the Internet's ability to connect them to the world, and they prize the freedom of the Web even as the government has tightened control over major television channels.

But now, computer users are worried that Cyrillic domains will give rise to a hermetic Russian Web, a sort of cyberghetto, and that the push for Cyrillic amounts to a plot by the security services to restrict access to the Internet. Russian companies are also resisting Cyrillic Web addresses, complaining about costs and threats to online security.

"This is one more step toward isolation," said Aleksei Larin, 31, a construction engineer in Tula, 115 miles south of Moscow. "And since this is a Kremlin project, it is possible that it will lead to the introduction of censorship, which is something that certain officials have long sought."

Besides startling Russian officials, the reaction has offered insights into the evolution of the Internet as it has spread from the West to the rest of the world. People in places like Russia have created a hybrid Web, typing domain and e-mail addresses in Latin letters and the content in native ones. However loyal they may be to the language of Dostoyevsky, many here do not want to embrace another system.

Many will decry the death of lesser languages, but not I.

(Thanks: vacationlanegrp)

Pressure Kim and make him China's problem

ARTICLE: North Korea Threatens to Fire Into Disputed Waters, By CHOE SANG-HUN, New York Times, December 21, 2009

An escalation I would love to see.

The sooner we empty the slave labor camp, the better.

We should ratchet up tension just as fast as that idiot wants to, because the harder we push, the more we push the problem onto Beijing.

Taiwan Strait: gone the way of the Fulda Gap

POST: Does The Navy Have A Place In McChrystal's War?, by Christopher Albon, USNI Blog, November 30, 2009

Nifty argument that reminds us the Navy--throughout our history--has been the natural SysAdmin player when it comes to overseas situations (whereas the Army ruled the West and the Marines ruled our littoral--writ large).

Key bit:

Staff corp officers might not be able to plan a defense of the North Atlantic, but they can run health clinics, manage construction projects, and coordinate with NGOs. They are America's soft-power specialists. If the Navy is going to take advantage of the humanitarian and development institutional knowledge of its staff corp officers, it must overcome its cultural biases towards the interests of line officers. In the 1980s, the Soviet Army learned that Afghanistan was not the Fulda Gap. Now, the US Navy must accept it is not the Taiwan Strait either.

As kick-in-the-ass endings go, nicely applied.

(Thanks: Lexington Green)

Labels for Obama aren't that helpful

OP-ED: Obama's Christian Realism, By DAVID BROOKS, New York Times, December 14, 2009

Brooks' piece has captured a lot of attention, for reasons that baffle me somewhat, but then I've never liked labels for myself (they always make me wince) and I guess I don't much care for them with Obama. I'm not saying that Brooks' piece isn't correct or well written. I just read it like I listened to Obama's Oslo speech: both struck me as fine and unremarkable, but hardly worthy of the title of "doctrine," "most important speech of his life" (Brooks' notion) and the like. Neither thus struck me, at first glance, as being worth a post. I simply nodded in agreement and moved on with my day.

So why does the Brooks piece seemingly strike many as important or revealing? All I can assume is that there is a strong popular desire to locate a commonly agreed upon label for Obama WRT foreign policy (sort of a strange merging of Carter and George H.W. Bush).

In effect, Obama says he's not going to take on the entire world like Bush the Younger and the neocons--the all-comers approach to maintain primacy, "maximum dominance" (Krauthammer's term) and so on.

Okay, reasoned enough after the depletions of the previous 7 years.

And yet, Obama says there are bad people worth fighting. Fighting them is a nasty business that can soil one's soul. But still, knowing that isn't an excuse for doing nothing. When America can do something, it should, and where it can't muster the full answer on its own, it should seek help. In everything we do, though, we should seek the wider discipline of rules embodied, as much as possible, in institutions and, where they might not yet exist, in our sense of morality (just not getting too self-assured on that last bit).

This, Brooks calls "Christian realism" because Obama likes Niebuhr. In the Cold War, if you thought like this, Brooks says you were a "cold war liberal," which apparently means you were a Democrat (softer on domestic issues) while embracing the utility of defense--even interventions against "evil" (thus standing closer to Republican hawks). In sum, you'd be center-left on domestic and center-right on foreign--or classic centrist (respecting the benefit of doubt in both directions, as in, better to err on the side of being too nice to your fellow citizens and better to err on the side of being too tough with the world outside--because you just never know).

Is that particularly "Christian"? Well, I know a lot of sensible people who think that way and aren't Christian, so I'd have to say, not necessarily. Indeed, I guess I know a lot of Christians who can't muster that combination whatsoever, so, in the end, I think being balanced and moderate is more important than your faith or lack thereof, because, when you hold to those yardsticks, you tend to be fairly modest in your faith too. Not that you believe less or are less "moral" per se, just that you tend to be more humble on the subject, less certain on this or that, less willing to shove your beliefs down other people's throats. You're a classic golden rule-type, more John Mills than Niebuhr.

I might just as easily say, ditch all the religious labeling and say centrists tend to be realists in the short run and idealists in the longer run, and they adjust as they see fit more than they cling to any one "enduring" answer. So, yeah, they're harder to label.

For the domestic policy Right, Obama is--of course--a full-blown nutcase socialist for not keeping his seemingly "moderate" campaign promises. For the foreign policy Left, Obama is--of course--a full-blown nutcase militarist for not keeping his seemingly "moderate" campaign promises. To the centrists, however, Obama seems to be keeping his campaign promises fairly well, pushing where he can and compromising where he must.

Does Christian realist thus matter much as a label? It apparently works for some, along with all the other things the man's been called. Certainly it's less offensive and more accurate than most.

But I don't find any of these labels--even the more reasoned ones--to be particularly useful or revealing. Obama strikes me as being exactly who he seemed to be during the campaign. Psycho-analyzing him is fun ("He read Niebuhr like MLK!") but--to me--it's an unsatisfying pursuit. Because as soon as you slap on that label, then, as soon as he "transgresses" the implied code (What would Niebuhr say!!!!), you're yet again "baffled" or "disappointed" or "shocked" or whatever.

And, at the end of the day, I find all such reactions undue hyperbole. [Indeed, that's the very same logic Sean and I apply when we send people packing from this site, because the search will always continue, even as some are convinced THE answer has already been found.]

I voted for Obama because he seemed careful and calculating and willing to deal when it made sense. I got none of those vibes from McCain, who still strikes me as too tortured a soul--literally and figuratively--for the job. Obama continues to be that guy I voted for, shoring up things he thinks need repairing and cutting back on things he thinks have gone too far. It ain't about the money, most of the time, because being careful doesn't mean spending more or less in all matters. It just means you can offer a fairly well reasoned rationale for your choices and priorities.

And, again, I think Obama does that pretty well.

Good post on Copenhagen

POST: The Cluster of Copenhagen II: The New American Century, By Walter Russel Mead, The American Interest, December 20th, 2009

Nice piece on Obama's accomplishment at Copenhagen. It's what I was reaching for, a bit lazily, in my short post on the same.

Gist: triangulating between fairly coherent camps, Obama gets down on paper that which the system can collectively muster--no more and no less.

But American diplomacy and leadership remains vital. To me, very FDR.

(Thanks: Lexington Green)

We're living with our choices around Iran

ARTICLE: Evidence of Iran's nuclear arms expertise mounts, By Joby Warrick, Washington Post, December 15, 2009

I said it in Great Powers: all the breaking stories and revelations will be true. Iran remains highly incentivized to seek the nuclear capacity.

Get all excited, if you must, about every "disturbing" new "surprise."

But pretending we are not participants in Iran's security dilemma dynamics is self-delusional. The primary reason for this effort is to forestall a possible U.S. invasion. We created that impression by the choices we made after 9/11, choices I thought--and still do--needed prioritization over any Iranian scenario.

But you live with the choices you make--and the security dilemmas you create.

As always, self-awareness is the key to properly managing one's fears.

The truth can be fuzzy under oath

ARTICLE: In Egan's Depositions, a New View of a Sex Scandal, By PAUL VITELLO, New York Times, December 2, 2009

One scary article of how Cardinal Egan dissembled and prevaricated--under oath--with a skill that surpasses Bill Clinton at his survivalist-best re: the sex-abuse scandal and his pre-NYC stint in Bridgeport CT.

My favorite bit for its sheer disingenuousness:

He emerges as a religious leader with an almost fatalistic view that the truth in many sex abuse cases is unknowable. "You are of the opinion that everything is crystal clear," he told a lawyer questioning him about his decisions. "I am not."

If only the church's leadership displayed such theological humility on a host of other controversial issues where they routinely weigh in with supreme confidence and hair-splitting discretion.

Ah, but the truth gets so fuzzy when it's your ass on the line.

Good political developments in Japan

MEMO FROM JAPAN: Japan's Relationship With U.S. Gets a Closer Look, By MARTIN FACKLER, New York Times, December 1, 2009

Gist:

"These are two partners who are not used to talking to each other," said Tobias Harris, a former political aide to a Democratic Party lawmaker who now writes a blog. Mr. Harris and other analysts said the two countries must figure out how they want to cooperate in a new era when the United States is no longer the unchallenged superpower, Japan is no longer willing or able to serve as Washington's pocketbook and the regional balance of power is being upended by China.

A good read to get the new lay of the political landscape in Japan.

All inevitable and good, in my mind, and a realistic counter to those who dream of our using Japan to counter China's rise.